Group Voicemail

[bentech]

I have multiple clients that have only 4-5 people in the office. The phone rings to a ring group that includes. It would be nice to have everyone have access to one voicemail box through webclient. If someone leaves a voicemail overnight it has to go somewhere.

What are you doing with your clients that need a setup like this? Currently, I just have a group voicemail setup that emails the voicemail to a shared email but it would be great if it was displayed in the Web Client.

Thoughts?

 

[SteveITS]

Vote here: https://www.3cx.com/community/threads/please-can-we-get-real-group-voicemail-added-to-3cx.61952/

We either deliver the notification to a shared emailbox or a distribution list.

 

[darthvader167]

I'm in the exact same scenario and need shared voicemail boxes ASAP!
The way I currently have it set up, is that I created a dummy extension, and all its calls go straight to its voicemail (no phone hooked up to it). Then, I have in my IVR menus options such as "to leave a msg for our general vm box, press X", and the caller gets transferred to that dummy extension's vm box. The way others check that dummy extension's vm box is here. It works, but I don't like having to make dummy extensions for shared voicemail boxes, as the employees have to go through all the steps to just check a vm msg, and they don't even get an indicator light on their phone! This is bad because I have to remind everyone to check the other vm boxes.
Having the ability to create shared vm boxes would be amazing! Literally every other PBX has this option, and I was surprised that 3CX doesn't given their steep pricing.

 

[SEGuy]

I know RingCentral also has this limitation (have to check a dummy line for certain scenarios), but moving clients from Cisco CallManager or similar products would be a hard sell if they're used to Shared Line VM.

 

[darthvader167]

SEGuy, exactly. I have several customers on older Cisco CM, Avaya IP Office, Asterisk, Nortel and Talkswitch. All those systems have shared voicemail. To me, there is no reason why 3CX can't have it.

 

[cobaltit]

Voicemail to email. Just because the 20 year old phone system did something doesn't mean modern ones have to.

 

[VoIPTools]

Here is what I have done in the past. I create a dummy extension (voicemail enabled) for the group. I then manually create a 2nd account on the physical phone that points to the dummy extension. When an email is left in the dummy extension's voicemail box, the MWI should display. Pressing the voicemail button on the phone displays a selection option for Account 1 and 2 (along with a count of voicemails in each account). You select the desired account and access the voicemails as you always have. I have not set this up for a couple of years, but it worked with Yealink the last time I tried it.

Alternatively, you could look at our Voicemail Manager Group Voicemail option. This feature propagates the actual voicemail to every member. That means everyone's MWI lights up, and the voicemail is handled just like any other voicemail -- voicemail to email, transcription, etc. Also, you can have a custom greeting too.

 

[darthvader167]

cobaltit, if you don't think that anyone in the world needs general voicemail, don't comment in this thread, as you're defying the point.
And yes, if 20 year old systems have general voicemail, I would expect a top-of-the line system like 3CX to have it. I don't understand why you're jumping to conclusions so fast.

 

[bentech]

Here is what I have done in the past. I create a dummy extension (voicemail enabled) for the group. I then manually create a 2nd account on the physical phone that points to the dummy extension. When an email is left in the dummy extension's voicemail box, the MWI should display. Pressing the voicemail button on the phone displays a selection option for Account 1 and 2 (along with a count of voicemails in each account). You select the desired account and access the voicemails as you always have. I have not set this up for a couple of years, but it worked with Yealink the last time I tried it.

Alternatively, you could look at our Voicemail Manager Group Voicemail option. This feature propagates the actual voicemail to every member. That means everyone's MWI lights up, and the voicemail is handled just like any other voicemail -- voicemail to email, transcription, etc. Also, you can have a custom greeting too.

Is this a plug in? It sounds interesting. When one person opens the voicemail does it still show unopened on the other peoples voicemail box?

 

[cobaltit]

cobaltit, if you don't think that anyone in the world needs general voicemail, don't comment in this thread, as you're defying the point.
And yes, if 20 year old systems have general voicemail, I would expect a top-of-the line system like 3CX to have it. I don't understand why you're jumping to conclusions so fast.

I never said no one needs group voicemail, although realistically that is the case. Many people WANT group voicemail, but I haven't come across any that NEED it. Yes folks are very resistant to change and they may have built their processes around group voicemail. Of course I'm sure a lot of their business processes were built around coming into the office too, but we all know how that is going right now.

But as you said, it's an expectation which is different from a requirement. If you are looking at 3CX and you did your research then you would know it doesn't have group voicemail in the traditional sense. So if you are still looking then the other benefits/features it does have must be compelling enough to outweigh the lack of group voicemail. We've done many installs replacing older systems with features that 3CX doesn't do like group voicemail or SLA and once we educated the customer on alternative ways of doing things they were just fine. And for those that wouldn't budge, we sold them a different system or said sorry, find something else. You can't please all the people all the time.

 

[darthvader167]

Ok. Since cobaltit you can't understand that there are some people who rely on general voicemail, I will take the time to explain it to you.
I have an office where there are 2 secretaries that work separate shifts. Back with my Talkswitch voip system, in the IVR menu there was an option to leave a msg for gen vm. When the caller pressed that option, they would leave a message for the general voicemail (nice and simple). Then, the employees would see indicator lights on both their phones that someone left them a vm msg. They would then log into their vm and hear "you have X msg in your extension's vm, and X msg in the general vm box". That was nice and simple, because when one employee read over a vm, the other wouldn't have to scratch their head to find out if the other person already dealt with it or spend lots of time logging into other vm boxes/deleting duplicate messages. I know that some may not understand this, but in a fast-paced office environment, you need to take immediate action on voicemails. When you have to spend minutes logging onto other "dummy extensions" voicemail boxes, and play the guessing game if you really need to check the vm box, that's something dysfunctional and unhelpful. Please understand that not everyone can afford to just knock a client off and ignore their needs like you do, but this is not for a client but for my own business. I'm afraid that there is no replacement for a real way of delivering a truly shared vm box. In my scenario, there is no replacement for a shared vm box, and that is why I and other customers could be evaluating other systems such as the Grandstream UCMs.

 

[leejor]

I'm sure that there are a lot of ring groups that, when not answered, would ideally be forwarded to a mailbox that would notify (on the sets), and be easily accessed by any one in that department.

Create a new General Voice Mailbox menu, in 3CX. The Voice mailbox gets assigned an extension number, and there is a drop down menu, to specify which sets (extensions) get the MWI, when a message is left. When any extension that has both a personal mailbox, and "general" mail box, dials the VM number, they get a message such as..."You have one personal message, and two general messages, press one for personal messages, and two for general messages". From that point on the menus would behave as they do now, including the option to record the outgoing message for the "general" mailbox.

The first person back from lunch, or first in, in the morning, gets to deal with messages left for the department, and not a specific person.

I had actually made this suggestion many years ago before the Ideas Forum existed.

 

[darthvader167]

I'm not going to even try with 3CX anymore. Too frustrating and complicated for me. For $450+ CAD, I would expect general vm. Today my company made the decision that we will be migrating to a Grandstream UCM6200. Sorry, 3CX is just too greedy for the limited options they offer.